RealClimate Reveals Willie Soon’s “Scientific Sleight of Hand”

Willie Soon has been an individual of significant interest lately in climate circles. Last week, he spoke at the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate change, or as we like to call it, Denial-a-Palooza. A recent Greenpeace report found that Soon accepted over $1 million in funding from fossil fuel interests, including Koch Industries.

While the paper’s central claims have already been disproven, the remaining issue is what appears to be Soon’s willing disregard for data. RealClimate found that Soon had cherry picked data showing the highest level of Arctic Oscillation (AO), a natural variability that he blamed for any increases in temperature in the Hudson Bay area:

“The evidence of the cherry-picking of data for the sake of an (irrelevant) higher correlation from the files is a very clear black flag.”

More importantly, RealClimate found evidence that Soon had access to more relevant data but chose not to use it. Rather than use data from Churchill which borders the Hudson Bay (an area that experienced little impact from Arctic Oscillation), Soon examined an area over 1000 miles away:

“So, the picture here is quite clear. Soon knew that the relevant data series for discussing the AO influence on Western Hudson Bay temperature (and by proxy, sea ice) was from Churchill and despite being reminded of the fact by the first set of reviewers, nonetheless continued to only show the AO connection to a site 1000 miles away, which had a much higher correlation without any discussion of whether this other data was at all relevant to Churchill or the bears nearby.”

Although it is worth mentioning that the paper was funded by Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and ExxonMobil (see the paper’s “Acknowledgements” section), it is what RealClimate describes as Soon’s “scientific sleight of hand” that most tarnishes his credibility.

When it comes down to it, the quality of the science is what matters. And skeptical science regularly resorts to misdirection and junk science as a mode to influence popular opinion. That is why we need scientists like those at RealClimate to break through the skeptical static and reveal the truth.

Anonymous you seem to be a few years behind in the news. The hockey stick was proven valid and McIntyre and McItrick were humiliated. Game, set and match. Oh well, don’t be sad. The macs still have jobs as deniers and liars for hire.

“The Hokey Schtick is only the most throughly discredited bit of scientific fraud in modern history.”

On denier blogs & conspiracy sites yes, couldn’t agree more.

On actual science sites or peer reviewed journals…no.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.abstract

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11646

Considering McIntyre & McItrick had no answer to that except on their own blogs, I would consider that checkmate. Please provide a peer reviewed paper that shows where the macs came back from that humiliating defeat. Oh…….. you didnt realise that opinion doesnt count? Only evidence? Pity you have none.

Folks, get ready for the crickets…because its time for this denier to evade the truth.Is that why you go by an anonymous name? Because your lies & falsifications are so frequent & provably wrong, that you dont want to be embarrased any further by people looking up the history of your misconceptions?

This is a list that Dr. Cynthia Boaz constructed on disinformation techniques. There are many sources for debunking rational/empirical arguments (at a surface level, although some are irrational arguments in disguise), so a guide for disinformation techniques seems warranted.

I intend to use this guide for shortcut responses – for instance, #4 is ad hominem so rather than bother refuting a fallacious and defamatory attack I’ll save time and type #4.

Most of the recent influx of denialist-trolls appear to be employing scripted or formulaic reactions to issues so the disinformation cheat sheet is just an easy way of addressing these denialbot-like responses.

One final thought – it occurs to me that I could and should add to this list but I’ll save that for later.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren’t activated, you aren’t alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don’t think rationally. And when they can’t think rationally, they’ll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person’s credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. “liberals,” “hippies,” “progressives” etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you’re using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It’s often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin’s mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they’ll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It’s technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I’d call a “meta-frame” (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like “show of strength” are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a “win.”

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user’s claims veracity in the viewer’s mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of “the people” and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always “elitist” or a “bureaucrat” or a “government insider” or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused “elitists” are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and “real Americans” (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn’t love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It’s a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. “Saddam has WMD.” Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it’s true or if it even makes sense, e.g., “Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States.” If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox’s own slogan of “Fair and Balanced.”

12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here’s how it works: if your cousin’s college roommate’s uncle’s ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev’s niece’s ex-boyfriend’s sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they’ll talk about wanting to focus on “moving forward,” as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.

In debating some of these tactics with colleagues and friends, I have also noticed that the Fox viewership seems to be marked by a sort of collective personality disorder whereby the viewer feels almost as though they’ve been let into a secret society. Something about their affiliation with the network makes them feel privileged and this affinity is likely what drives the viewers to defend the network so vehemently. They seem to identify with it at a core level, because it tells them they are special and privy to something the rest of us don’t have. It’s akin to the loyalty one feels by being let into a private club or a gang. That effect is also likely to make the propaganda more powerful, because it goes mostly unquestioned.

We could waste time pretending that there’s valid reasons for skepticism about climate science but even the psychological reasons don’t adequately explain the denial-troll behavior. The point is that explanations such as motivated reasoning still assume there’s some intent to find the truth.

A better example of what we’re dealing with is found in an article about the Institute on Religion and Democracy and their war against left-leaning Christian denominations. IRD took their tactics from the CIA, which had been using them to neutralize and destroy foreign groups, e.g., unions, etc., deemed to be counter to US interests.

“-‘Political warfare in short, is warfare–not public relations. It is
one part persuasion and two parts deception…. The aim of political
warfare…is to discredit, displace, and neutralize an opponent, to
destroy a competing ideology, and to reduce the adherents to political
impotence. It is to make one’s own values prevail by working the
levers of power, as well as by using persuasion.’-” (Barnett, 1961).

The is no presumption on my part that we’re dealing with good faith arguments. The typical denialist post is intentional disinformation and propaganda, and I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense but a technical one. It’s a very calculated attempt to spread disinformation in order to combat information deemed threatening. It’s a counter-terrorism technique, which is to say that it is a form of terrorism.

Are you sure you did not just sort of “borrow” those points from a sceptic site. I am sure I have seen all of them in a description of Warmist cult members.
Right down to the personality disorder comment…

You are simply partisan and thus lack humanity. You need to grow up, get out more and actually go speak to conservatives. They want the same thing you do, I assume, that being a world that doesn’t suck, but they differ from you in their *opinion* in how to achieve that end. You imagine that a TV news channel has an all powerful effect on public opinion rather than dare to consider that Fox is merely offering an anti-leftist view to people who have grown tired of the leftist agenda because, quite frankly, they want to artificially ration energy! Fox viewers are out on jet skis and having BBQs while you are hand-wringing about brain washing. Sad, that.

“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” - Winston Churchill

For the record, I’m 45 and have an ivy league Ph.D. in chemistry and half my family was conservative, er Mormon, and well, they didn’t suck, and they weren’t so miserable as most people, so why would I hate them? I was raised with The Whole Earth Catalog as my adolescent bible. It taught me that classic liberalism, anti-establishment liberalism was *not* at all about artificial energy rationing at the barrel of a gun!
See also: Mamet, David (http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/converting-mamet_561048.html?page=2).

Basically what happened is a bunch of hippies dropped acid in the 60s and 70s and the super cool smart ones went on to create the personal computer revolution whereas the boring ones became the Yuppies and the misfit crazy ones went on to become Marxist Mathusians within the government and academia and they thus set out to create the back-to-Earth paradise that failed in their youth, only this time they need violent enforcement of their meager ways, since the alpha males of the communes spoiled all the fun, back in the day, and we can’t have that any more!

13. Guilt by Association.
See: entry #13 and all mention of Fox News viewers above.
“This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here’s how it works: if your cousin’s college roommate’s uncle’s ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev’s niece’s ex-boyfriend’s sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.”

So “anonymous” thinks warmists are scared. What scares me is that there are enough idiots like “anonymous” in the USA that they are able to elect people who think like them. What I find ironic is that “anonymous” thinks he detects “desperation in the air around these Warmists sites” at the very same time that Arctic sea ice extent is the lowest ever recorded for this date, http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent_L.png
and Antarctic sea ice extent is simultaneously the lowest ever recorded for this date (by a long way),
http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/ice_ext_s.png
You’d really think it would be enough to shut any rational person up, at least until the cooling he expects on the basis of his 70-yesr oscillstion “theory” or whatever actually appears.

a return to a period of cooling is the most reasonable thing to expect because warming and cooling cycles have been the norm - forever. A departure from the back and forth to straight up warming is a new idea. Its prognostication. The thing scientists do most consistently is - they get the future wrong.

We live in a world where corporations run campaigns to further their financial interests, whether these interests are to keep selling tobacco products, keep polluting our rivers and seas, or keep pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

“We live in a world where corporations run campaigns to further their financial interests, whether these interests are to keep selling tobacco products, keep polluting our rivers and seas, or keep pumping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

You are exactly describing the central leader of your movement!

“Throughout most of my life, I’ve raised tobacco…I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it. I’ve chopped it. I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.” - Al Gore 1988

His AGW activism may make him the first carbon billionaire, which he is quite proud of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbLK4RZDdzI

He is a partner of Kleiner Perkins, a green venture capital firm, i.e. a green BANK. He then claims every penny he has made has been given to environmental activist causes! And yet….

His new ocean view six-fireplace palace can be drooled over here:
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2010/05/exclusive-estimate-carbon-footprint-of.html

The jet ski on the back of his yacht was spotted by a local here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19PAXEzx1Uo

I can’t figure out why there is still a debate coming from the *skeptical* side of things, actually, in that basic data exists that if simply was continuously pointed out should be enough to clear this whole culture was up! My currently favorite expression of your argument here is the basic tide gauge global average that shows utterly no trend change in 150 years:

http://i.min.us/idFxzI.jpg

But remember, evil skeptic how unfair you are unfairly “cherry picking” if you harp on a given anti-AGW result!:

“Monbiot (2006) notes that mostly these groups use ‘selection not invention’. They cherry-pick one contradictory study (and remember science operates by people questioning the accepted) and then promote it relentlessly.” – John Cook and Hadyn Washington (“Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand,” 2011).

Supporting the global average tide data are several studies:

It you’d like a few references about recent sea level in fact decelerating in trend, here they are:

That’s the USA and Pacific Ocean, and says: “Least-squares quadratic analysis of each of the 57 records are performed to quantify accelerations, and 25 gauge records having data spanning from 1930 to 2010 are analyzed. In both cases we obtain small average sea-level decelerations.”

That’s Australia (deceleration since 1940) that says: “The analysis reveals a consistent trend of weak deceleration at each of these gauge sites throughout Australasia over the period from 1940 to 2000. Short period trends of acceleration in mean sea level after 1990 are evident at each site, although these are not abnormal or higher than other short-term rates measured throughout the historical record.”

That one was the Pacific based on the longest records available which says: “The estimated average rate of sea level rise from the longest records is computed to be +0.3 mm/yr, almost an order of magnitude less than the IPCC estimates.”

(6) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.1771/abstract

That one was Europe and N. America which says: “Most sea-level data originate from Europe and North America, and both the sets display evidence for a positive acceleration, or ‘inflexion’, around 1920–1930 and a negative one around 1960. These inflexions are the main contributors to reported accelerations since the late 19th century, and to decelerations during the mid- to late 20th century.”

“Wonder where the sea levels would be if we let all the water out of all the dams & reservoirs worldwide?”

I don’t know. Were I to adopt the hand-waving strategy of AGW enthusiasts, I would frantically posit that the weight released into the oceans would push the ocean floor down and allow the continental land to reboundingly rise, perfectly compensating each other to result in no sea level change. This is *exactly* the sort of sloppy non-empirical reasoning used by pro-AGW sea level experts! The recently added 0.3 mm a year to actual sea level in order to compensate for the ocean floor sinking due to the weight of water, thus in Orwellian fashion quietly re-defining what “sea level” means.

‘I can’t figure out why there is still a debate coming from the *skeptical* side of things,…’

Clearly you seem incapable of figuring out where the truth lies in this debate.

Let me just take your first link. BTW Well done you have demonstrated that you can use Google to find scientific papers and journals, now all you need to do is to develop the skills required to interpret them correctly. Or maybe you are just content to be another James Delingpole, an interpreter of interpretations.

And before you yell about an ad hominum attcak from being called a denier what else could you, somebody who denies the validity of APGW. be described as but a denier. Simple really. Perhaps we should start calling snow rain and ice steam, rather silly don’t you think.

Now you refer to us thus:

You are simply partisan and thus lack humanity.

I’ll show you where there is a lack of humanity, and almost certainly criminally so:

This is of course well in line with Pat Michaels record with Western Fuels sponsors of Greening Earth that started the whole, ‘an increase in CO2 and temperatures would be good for agriculture’ nonsense that is still spouted here.

Pat Michaels, he who was so coy about his sources of funding:

Pat Michaels admits: ‘40 percent’ of funding comes from big oil.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fguJod_voPc&feature=related

and that was just oil with western Fuels being largely about Wyoming coal. Read Jeff Goodell’s, ‘Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.’

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/books/review/25powell.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjvrXVDuDF8

You should be outraged that very wealthy companies such as Peabody use tax payers dollars to cover the costs of building a dirty power station that poisons the local community as well as those existing in extraction areas. But that is the way of all companies involved in extracting and using fossil fuels.

Did you know that the toxic waste from fossil fuel extraction outweighs by far all the waste, low level, intermediate level and high level, from nuclear industries?

Also the toxic chemicals involved with fossil fuel have an active life much longer than many of the by-product elements from nuclear power production because they don’t have half-lives.

If you have such convincing evidence for CAGW, Why are most of your arguments about some melting ice, a few storms, a flood or drought?
”

First of all, I’m honoured that the paid deniers in the lobbying firms have determined that I am a threat to them & they have directed their persona management software bots to argue against me.

Second of all, you tried to get me banned & this blog & it didnt work…… :)

Thirdly, I have never mentioned the acronym “CAGW”. That is a denier term to convey that there is an exagerated call of catastrophe. The upshot of that I guess is, you guys have moved beyond AGW& have actually accepted that it now man made. Now you are arguing whether the warming is going to be bad (sensitivity) or catastrophic. We are arguing it wont be good.

Fourth. I rarely mention melting ice, flooding, storms or drought. Its like 1 in 20 of my posts.

You guys really need to tweak your persona management bots or come on here yourself & argue. Oh & the fact that you cant get your software to use legitimate pseudonyms as yet is lame & shows how noob you are.

Oh & anonymous bots…..scroll up. Im still waiting on your rebuttal of the hockey stick links I placed above. The sound of the crickets are starting to get on my nerves.

1. There was a little bit of warming in the latter part of the twentieth century.
2. CO2 does help to trap some heat.
3. Humans have liberated some CO2 in the last 100 years.

The questions that have yet to be answered;

1. Was human released CO2 the main cause of the little warming blip?
2. What is the real sensitivity of the Climate to increases in CO2?
3. Is the added CO2 likely to have a net beneficial or harmful effect?

What I have seen so far:

1. There is still no credible evidence that CO2 was any more than a minor contributor to the warm spell.
2. The highly controversial sensitivity figure is most likely to be very low in the final analysis. The effect of CO2 are very small and decrease exponentially as the concentration increases. There are many feedback factors that have yet to be understood, but the net effect seem to be a self regulating system that CANNOT “tip” into catastrophic warming.
3. The net effect is likely to be very beneficial. Every similar warming in history (and there have been many) have help to advance civilization greatly. It is likely that the optimum CO2 level for us now is around 1000 to 1500 ppm.

Polar bear numbers doubled in five years starting in 1967 from 10,000 to 20,000 due to hunting controls, and it has stayed at 20K for decade after decade. Their endangerment only exists in highly speculative computer models. There is a graph that puts the current panic into perspective, here: http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/thespike/2008/05/15/the-great-polar-bear-…

Another fact free character assassination of an eccentric skeptic who has so far had little influence on serious skeptical argumentation. Polar bear numbers doubled in five years starting in 1967 from 10,000 to 20,000 due to hunting controls, and it has stayed at 20K for decade after decade. Their endangerment only exists in highly speculative computer models. Here is a graph that puts the current panic into perspective, here:

The link to RealClimate means readers only see comments there the are not censored out, their moderation policy being specifically designed to only allow rookie skeptical arguments through, or anything they have a quick soundbite to counter, but serious comments and followups to snarky criticism are never allowed. That’s why this blog still interests me: the moderation policy is not draconian and manipulative, so I don’t think it will create new skeptics like RC continues to do every time a new person starts asking questions there only to be ridiculed and then banned from a given thread.

Soon is an unknown to me, mostly, though his recent Heartland institute presentation was very heated, which I found stimulating compared to all the old fogies. He’s one of the few quite young skeptics. He presented an astonishing correlation between Chinese temperatures and sun output, so astonishing that I must withhold judgement for now.

Alas, James Hoggan is of the view that:

“In court (and before you conclude that I am lawyer-bashing, I learned all
this in law school myself, there is a convention that every accused person
deserves the best possible defense, and it is the lawyer’s duty to mount
that defense to the best of his or her ability. We have even grown to accept
the idea that it’s acceptable to construct a case that is entirely - almost
deceptively - one-sided, knowing that the lawyer on the other side will
bring equal vigor to the case.)” - James Hoggan (“Climate Cover-Up”, 2009)

Unfortunately, unlike James and Michael Fisher, us skeptics are mostly not paid to do this, so it’s quite taxing to try to offer the other side of the case. That I know stories here will be “almost deceptive” means it’s hard to take the site all that seriously. I have to check every claim and that takes so much time!

Let’s do my usual and check the temperature. The RC article claims the Hudson Bay is losing ice. The 5X5 gridded temperature there is certainly spiking: http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/climapgr.aspx?statid=N5:55-60N:75-80W.

However, the Hudson Bay polar bear population is steady:

http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html

So the whole polar bears in Hudson Bay cat fight is to my mind moot. This is the usual case, when I delve into the real facts behind posts like this one by Fisher. It’s kind of fun to debunk things by providing proper perspective. “Show me the data!” - Burt Rutan

Speaking of one-sided partisan debate of one side against the other:

In 1986 The Oxford Union debating society rejected “That the Doctrine of Creation is more valid than the Theory of Evolution” by 198 to 150. In 2010 they accepted “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110.”

Another fact free character assassination of an eccentric skeptic who has so far had little influence on serious skeptical argumentation. Polar bear numbers doubled in five years starting in 1967 from 10,000 to 20,000 due to hunting controls, and it has stayed at 20K for decade after decade. Their endangerment only exists in highly speculative computer models. Here is a graph that puts the current panic into perspective, here:

The link to RealClimate means readers only see comments there the are not censored out, their moderation policy being specifically designed to only allow rookie skeptical arguments through, or anything they have a quick soundbite to counter, but serious comments and followups to snarky criticism are never allowed. That’s why this blog still interests me: the moderation policy is not draconian and manipulative, so I don’t think it will create new skeptics like RC continues to do every time a new person starts asking questions there only to be ridiculed and then banned from a given thread.

Soon is an unknown to me, mostly, though his recent Heartland institute presentation was very heated, which I found stimulating compared to all the old fogies. He’s one of the few quite young skeptics. He presented an astonishing correlation between Chinese temperatures and sun output, so astonishing that I must withhold judgement for now.

Alas, James Hoggan is of the view that:

“In court (and before you conclude that I am lawyer-bashing, I learned all
this in law school myself, there is a convention that every accused person
deserves the best possible defense, and it is the lawyer’s duty to mount
that defense to the best of his or her ability. We have even grown to accept
the idea that it’s acceptable to construct a case that is entirely - almost
deceptively - one-sided, knowing that the lawyer on the other side will
bring equal vigor to the case.)” - James Hoggan (“Climate Cover-Up”, 2009)

Unfortunately, unlike James and Michael Fisher, us skeptics are mostly not paid to do this, so it’s quite taxing to try to offer the other side of the case. That I know stories here will be “almost deceptive” means it’s hard to take the site all that seriously. I have to check every claim and that takes so much time!

Let’s do my usual and check the temperature. The RC article claims the Hudson Bay is losing ice. The 5X5 gridded temperature there is certainly spiking: http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/climapgr.aspx?statid=N5:55-60N:75-80W.

However, the Hudson Bay polar bear population is steady:

http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html

So the whole polar bears in Hudson Bay cat fight is to my mind moot. This is the usual case, when I delve into the real facts behind posts like this one by Fisher. It’s kind of fun to debunk things by providing proper perspective. “Show me the data!” - Burt Rutan

Speaking of one-sided partisan debate of one side against the other:

In 1986 The Oxford Union debating society rejected “That the Doctrine of Creation is more valid than the Theory of Evolution” by 198 to 150. In 2010 they accepted “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110.”

“Are you really saying that you believe the whole green agenda is about altruism?”

Are you really saying it’s a grand conspiracy involving every scientific institute on the planet & virtually every university, plus virtually every government to create a NWO or some socialist/communist system?

“you are blind to the billions of dollars up for grabs in greenie schemes?”

How else to they kick start green schemes when the tax payers have been forking out subsidies and infrastructure for the fossil fuel industry for the past hundred years? The fossil fuel industry has had rail, water,ports etc specially built for them, funded by the taxpayer and on top of that, they have been given subsidies all these years. Are you blind to that? If we were to invest the equal amount into green tech Im ure we would see a different energy outcome than the present.

“you probably dont even ge that “Cap n Trade” is all about billions in broker fees do you?”

[“Are you really saying it’s a grand conspiracy involving every scientific institute on the planet & virtually every university, plus virtually every government to create a NWO or some socialist/communist system?”]

Not directly, no. All those thousands of scientists studying the effects of climate change have been convinced so far by a tiny group of proxy-loving paleoclimatologists (“The Hockey Stick Team” of Climategate fame) that warming this century is utterly unprecedented and thus is most very likely due to CO2 emissions. That specific claim is what massive funding for the entire field of environmental science and environmental journalism and related fields of environmental sociology etc. now relies on. If they speak out about it, down comes the axe from their less sincere colleagues with house payments and kids to feed, and most crucial of all, down goes their self and public image as haloed saviors of the human race, and thus evaporates their social status, the biggest driver of all in aggressive primates.

It’s merely the vaccine/autism scare writ large, though believers in that scare (promoted by the same PR firm that the RealClimate.org web site is registered to) to this day still cling to the mercury-in-vaccines theory of autism even though their version of the Mannian “hockey stick” was utterly bogus.

It is quite similar to how Ancel Keys hoodwinked the entire medical establishment into believing that dietary cholesterol represented the single silver bullet that was responsible for heart disease, when in fact it was only a minor player. AGW is *exactly* analogous to the cholesterol theory of heart disease, in fact. Keys was very politically connected and through a senator, did exactly what Jim Hansen did: pushed his theory directly into the heart of the federal government policy making and R&D funding.

I have no opinion on Cap and Trade. If I wasn’t convinced AGW was mostly crap I probably would.

…also, once this small band of sadly misguided Hockey Stick teamsters launched Global Warming Science into the billion instead of million dollar league, and it became well accepted, and as trillion dollar levels of policy matters began attaching to it, out of the woodwork jumped, up from the grass leapt , and down from the rafters rappelled all manner of formerly discouraged political activists, peace mongers, cultists, New Age spiritualists, tree huggers, GINOs (“Greens in Name Only”), and now their policies are being ever more frantically pushed at the last minute as the house of cards is just starting to truly topple.

AGW theory for better or worst, offered a potential peaceful excuse to bring various countries and cultures together in common cause. Humans, being the most gregarious animals of all, have an instinct that plays out more in some individuals than others that represents a drive to embrace as wide of group of others as possible. Alas, AGW created a culture ware between individualists and collectivists, one that threatens to upset the balance between the political left (maniacal planners) and right (crazy entrepreneurs), leaving the left in tatters, creating a new swing to the far right. Being one of the crazy entrepreneurs, mostly by congenital temperament (and remember political persuasion is also 50% genetic according to identical twin studies), I’m currently rooting for the Fox News viewers against the increasingly fascist element of left wing politics.

I pine for the good old days when late night TV was full of truly thoughtful classic liberals who were bristling with ideas instead of yelling silly soundbites, but until the left ejects the player hater element and gives up silly idealism, I have no use for them. First it was the self-loathing response to 9/11 and then AGW hokum that spoiled the left for me, still a trippy hippie at heart. All the rage I see on sites like this I now account more to the general mayhem of crashing idealism directed at a perceived enemy, just a blame game, a very bad trip, rather than to actual righteous wrath. Such hostility is highly destructive both to personal health and to social standing. If you think the angry Punk backlash against Disco was bad, wait till kids rebel against your attempt to indoctrinate them with AGW hysteria based on junk science! Oops!!! At least you can lie to them and claim your were skeptics back then, assuming Google wont reveal your dirty little shameful secret.

And yet another:
Prof. Horst Malberg: Climate Change At Most 10% Because Of CO2 – Dominated by The Sun http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/08/prof-horst-mahlberg-climate-change-at-most-10-because-of-co2-dominated-by-the-sun/

On dissent amongst scientists involved with the IPCC what Lindzen is not telling you is that the dissatisfaction amongst scientists was about the information for policy makers understating the projections of future warming etc.

And that business about scientists predicting the end of the world is arrant nonsense at two levels. Firstly they made no such prediction and secondly many species, including humans as we know us could become extinct but the world would still carry on but with a very changed atmosphere. If we further delay action on climate change then we will be increasing the risk of such an outcome with tougher decisions on mitigation being passed on to our descendants. If you have kids and care about their future then do not continue with this BS or paying too much attention to the likes of Lindzen, Michaels, Spencer and Christy. They will be shown eventually, maybe even sooner, to be on the wrong side of history here.

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